A momentous task

Raya Hassan has been Lebanon’s Minister of Finance since the government was sworn in, in November 2009. Before becoming a minister, she worked in the office of the prime minister on both Paris II and Paris III donor conferences, and served as an advisor to the minister of economics and trade with the United Nations Development Program. As part of her ministerial duties she has been tasked with drafting a budget for a country that has been without one since 2005. On condition that figures relating to the budget would not be discussed, Hassan agreed to an exclusive interview with Executive to discuss issues related to the budget, the public debt and the finance ministry’s strategy going forward. E The government’s debt strategy so far has been to trade short-term debt for long-term debt; this increases the debt service and moves the burden onto future generations, as well as exposing